So I mentioned here that Meijer was out of pumpkins the day before Halloween. So I bought little ones. I didn’t help much on the trick or treating. Eileen used these little pumpkins as a bit of a decoration garnish I suppose in lieu of our usual Jack O Lanterns.

This morning I was wondering if they were edible. The Interwebs tells me they are. So I am going to cook them up.

Recipes I looked up online suggested stuffing them. I am cooking up a batch of mushrooms, onions, and garlic to stuff them with.

Plus the seeds are edible like usual pumpkins. I am planning on roasting them up as well.

I am feeling a tad better this morning. I slept hard. I also suspect that getting back to exercising is helping my over physical well being. Hey. It can’t hurt to move around.

C. P. E. Bach suffered from gout for forty years. I figure I can suffer with a rash until Monday (if not longer). I started reading C. P. E.’s letters this morning. He hated the portrait above. He said that it was “anything but a good likeness and more resembles someone sleeping than awake.”

What Can Liberals on the Supreme Court can do now by Linda Greenhouse

When dissent is all there is, Ruth Bader Ginsburg shows the way.

A Quietly Big Idea on How We Think About Homeless People by Jay Kaspian Kang

ACLU has an idea “Rather than think of homelessness as a condition, the authors argue, lawmakers should protect those who live on the street in the same way that the Constitution and California law protect groups based on race, gender or religion. The report calls for “state legislation prohibiting discrimination based on housing status.”

Time to stop and go have lunch.

I am trying to stay off my feet as much as possible due to the swelling in my legs. The swelling goes down at night but as the day proceeds comes back. It’s disconcerting but the nurse practitioner was not unduly alarmed by it. I am reasonably sure that this dang rash is not affecting my overall health in a detrimental way. My BP and weight this morning were unchanged from the day ‘s before (a rare occurrence but reassuring at this point). I feel okay. But my rash itches and burns on various parts of my body almost constantly. I can temporarily alleviate some of the discomfort by rinsing with a wet wash cloth and/or applying skin moisturizer.

Also a bit like chronic pain I can distract myself and then it’s easier to endure. Good distractions seem to be having meals with Eileen, reading, practicing, and blogging.

I still did some exercising this morning since today marks the day that I no longer have to worry about injuring my eye after surgery with strenuous activity. I did a no thank you helping of each exercise, plus stretches. I am minimizing the “old man running in place” exercise since it seems like that would aggravate the swelling in legs.

Potion, Emotion, Devotion: Wagner‘s Tristan und Isolde

Started my day listening to this. Alex Ross joins the panel. I found the aria in my score and followed it.

I love this piece and this player is amazing. I listened to it last night with Eileen for a bit and then again this morning while exercising and making coffee and tea.

Ben Lerner Reads Julio Cortázar | The New Yorker Fiction Podcast

Sometimes these discussions with authors about authors with Deborah Treisman the New Yorker Fiction editor are like a class in writing and thinking. I found this one to be like that. I lay in bed before getting up and listened to the entire podcast, then dug out my own copy of Cortázar’s Unreasonable Hours out of the my library before coming downstairs.

Later I interlibrary loaned a couple of books by Ben Lerner. I like the way his mind works.

Rash update

My rash is still bad. I had a bad night last night. Eileen and I were considering going to a walk in clinic because we were both concerned that I am having swelling in my legs and arms along with the rash. After breakfast and boggle I decided to call an online “Ask a Nurse” help to find out if we should go to a clinic.

I went on to Spectrum Health’s MyChart to copy down my meds in case I needed to know them and discovered there was a way to talk to someone online through Spectrum. So that’s what I did.

It was pretty cool. I was able to show the nurse practitioner my rash and swelling on the camera. She felt that as long as I wasn’t exhibiting symptoms like shortness of breath that I was probably okay until next Monday. That was reassuring.

However I am not functioning as well as I have been. Since my legs are swollen I feel like it’s smarter to keep them elevated. I’m planning to spend time in my easy chair to help that.

Ironically today is the last day that I can’t lift due to the healing of my eye operation. So I can lift but I itch like crazy and have swollen legs and arms.

The reason Eileen was concerned about the swelling is that it’s not very pretty. My right leg is much more swollen than my left. My right arm is more swollen than my left arm.

I continue to monitor my blood pressure and weight daily. The blood pressure has not elevated alarmingly. My weight has gone up but that might be due in part to the swelling.

So now all I have to do is survive until next Monday despite the fact that I’m not sure my dermatologist will have any answers since they couldn’t diagnose it before. I am hopeful he can give me something to ease the symptoms which are kind of a pain.

I am still able to read and practice piano.

I have been trying to finish library’s copy of Hayden Carruth’s The Crow and the Heart: 1846-1959 since it is due soon. I have been impressed with this poetry. Carruth makes beautiful and exquisitely crafted poems. His language often puts me in mind of Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson. Dickinson herself often uses a Shakespearian language. This is Carruth’s first collection. I have about 15 pages left in it.

Speaking of Shakespeare, I was reading Burgess’s This Man and Music this morning. In the sixth chapter entitled “Under the Bam,” Burgess talks about relationships between literature and music. Early on he points out a sonnet by Shakespeare which I always think of as his harpsichord sonnet (Sonnet 128). Burgess says “That Shakespeare worked among musicians and knew what musical instruments look like we do not doubt. He presents, in one of his sonnets, a very closely observed picture of a lady playing the virginal, though he errs in his use of the term, ‘jacks.'”

When I looked it up I remembered thinking the line was weird: “Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand.” I use A L. Rowse’s Shakespeare’s Sonnets: The Problems Solved.

I always thought it was a bit of an arrogant title, but I did learn a ton from it. He gives a “prose version” of each sonnet. I notice that he corrected “jacks” to “keys” in his prose version: “I envy those keys that leap up nimbly to kiss your hand’s tender palm.”

I have more I could write about but I think I’m going to knock off and convalesce. More tomorrow.

I called my dermatologist this morning. The person who answered the phone said there were no cancelations before my Nov 12 appointment but encouraged me to call back later today to check. This I will do. I hope that I have reached the peak of this rash. I did drink last night. But I changed my pattern and drank more slowly as Eileen and I stayed up watching Downtown Abbey. I slept in accordingly. My weight and BP are creeping up but I attribute that to my own behavior patterns of increased caloric intake combined with a possible change in my metabolism due to not exercising. The latter will change this Wednesday when I will free to gradually reintroduce exercises to my old body.

I made bread this morning despite rising late. Eileen noticed my last batch was more moist. This was probably because I made a batch simply using up all the flour in the house which was mostly white bread flour. I tried to do something like that today and only used 1 C of whole wheat flour and 6 C of bread flour. This seems to have worked.

Again I benefited from having an extensive collection of unread books yesterday. I read Jacque Barzun’s essay, “”As Uncomfortable as a Modern Self: On Virginia Woolf’s A Writer’s Diary” in , the collection of essays I mentioned yesterday, A Company of Readers. I went upstairs and found a copy of the book and started reading it yesterday.

I have been reading Woolf since I was a young man. She has had a huge influence on me. This book is a posthumous selection by her widower, Leonard Woolf, from her 26 diaries. He went through them and culled any mention of her writings, any practicing she did in her diary for her other work, and passages where she comments on the works of others. I have read many of her books and essays and have been able to follow her diary entries with pleasure. They beginning in 1918 and I up to 1921.

Apparently this is about the time that the TV series Downtown Abbey takes place.

Another thing I noticed about the series is that the beauty of old houses and the scenery they use in it. I have noticed this in other BBC series. The setting is practically one of the characters of story. This is fitting when I think of the popularity of public access to buildings the English call National Trusts.

We have visited one or two of these when we see Sarah in England. I know that she regularly goes to these and enjoys the grounds when she visits. They are usually beautiful mansions with gardens and shops for visitors.

Another correlation is in my reading. I am finishing the final volume of J. G. Farrell’s Empire Trilogy, The Siege of Krishnapur. Farrell wrote these books as bitter indictments of England’s colonialism. The Siege of Krishnapur takes place in India around 1857. Troubles is also in this series and takes place in 1919 which is very near the time of Downtown Abbey. These two volumes provide background for the story being told by Downtown Abbey and Virginia Woolf’s diaries. We’re at the point in the TV series when a character (Shrimpie) is being re-assigned to an Indian outpost. Knowing what a dire situation England was in at this point with the Empire crumbling casts light on the both Shrimpie’s future and the bigoted statements of the Anglican clergy about empire as he tries to dissuade a Irish character from raising his child in the Catholic church.

Fun stuff.